DEATHSTALKER IV: MATCH OF TITANS (1991)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological*

Howard R. Cohen, who wrote the first and third DEATHSTALKER films (but not the second funny one), got the chance to both write and direct the Stalker's last exploit. MATCH OF TITANS also offered actor Rick Hill, returning to the role he originated in the first film, as the brawny barbarian who can't be troubled with anything like a normal first name. 

Of course, almost any time producer Roger Corman made a sequel to anything, it became "old home week" regardless of the personnel, because Corman usually recycled footage from the original and other works. This time both the original DEATHSTALKER and the separate flick BARBARIAN QUEEN are worked into the new story, although MATCH arguably does so less than many other such productions.

In a plot-line loosely derived from the third movie, Deathstalker's looking for an old buddy, Aldilar. It seems that the hero at some point acquired a magical sword (not mentioned in the three previous films), but Aldilar accidentally took the magic sword with him and left behind some mundane blade. Deathstalker interrupts his search for his sword-swiping friend long enough to help out a maiden beseiged by nasty soldiers. He wanders a bit more and hooks up with a second swordsman, Vaniat (Brett Baxter Clark), and a little later they save hot blonde Dionara (Maria Ford) from some marauding pig-men. Dionara informs them that she's on the way to participate in a tournament at the castle of Queen Kana, so the two studs go along with her, Deathstalker still hoping to find his sword.

I may as well note at this point that Dionara has an ulterior motive for seeking out Kana, because Kana usurped the rule of Dionara's parents and forced Dionara into exile. I mention it here because though Dionara reveals this backstory to Deathstalker later, the heritage of this "warrior princess" has nearly no dramatic impact.

So the three wanderers enter the tournament and begin fighting people, which is the only good thing about MATCH. It might sport bad performances and a plot from hunger, but at least Cohen almost always has sweaty, scantily clad men and women on screen. Almost all of the female warriors wear leather halters and skirts, and the most avowedly lesbian one ends up in a death-match with Dionara.

The three heroes are all pretty dull, even when Sralker and Dionara take a few moments to swap spit. The best scenes go to the villainous Queen Kana (Michelle Moffett). The evil queen in Cohen's previous Stalker-opus talked a little bit about torturing the hero endlessly, but Kana sells the sadism better. She specializes in drugging male contestants, implicitly having dominant sex with them (not shown), and then turning them into stone-faced slaves. BTW, Stalker does eventually find both his magic sword and his lost buddy, the latter having been "petrified" by Kana.

While the sleaze factor registers high, no one in the cast can fake-fight his or her way out of a paper bag. But it's worth mentioning that even though Maria Ford is one of the worst in this respect, she got better. In 1994 she starred as a curvaceous kickboxing cop in ANGEL OF DESTRUCTION, an above-average American chopsocky, and she made effective appearances in about a half dozen junk-films.